This project is concerned with the processes whereby individuals and couples decide (a) to have or not have a child, and (b) to use or not to use contraception to avoid or delay pregnancy. The conceptual foundation of the study comes from theory and research in two areas: individual decision making (using the Fishbein model) and interpersonal communication and conflict resolution. The study will focus on individual ambivalence or indifference and intracouple motivational conflict as contributors to unwanted pregnancy. The focal questions are whether partners recognize conflicting motivations, how they handle them if they do, and what the consequnences are in terms of fertility intentions and decisions. Subjects for the study are 240 young couples of differing educational levels, selected from marriage and birth records in two San Francisco Bay Area counties. Data are being collected from three groups of couples: (1) childless couples married for six months; (2) childless couples married for eighteen months; and (3) couples who had a second child six months previously. A longitudinal follow up of these couples, to be proposed later, would permit a test of hypotheses regarding the effect of pronatalist norms on (a) openness of communication between spouses regarding contraception and (b) fertility outcomes.